45 Years with My Three Schizophrenics

          

     My first son, schizophrenic, eventually killed his girlfriend, then himself.
    My second wife, schizophrenic, put us all through hell for 12 years, is now in a half-way house, suffers from multiple personalities.
    Her son, my youngest, lives with me, suffers severely from paranoia that an Asian Mafia gang is after him.  He attempted suicide a year ago to escape them.
    I am the common denominator in all this.  Children from two marriages are schizophrenics.  No one from my side, generations back, ever suffered from mental disorders.  But I am the common link.  Why?  Is there some hidden defect in me?  Did I unconsciously deliberately choose the wrong mates?
    Or is all this mere chance?  A nasty little side joke in a neutral universe.
    The rest of my life is wonderful, blessed.  I'm not whining about fate.  A really crazy optimist could argue I have been saddled, honored with three schizophrenics in a row, because I am so uniquely talented in forbearance, understanding, tolerance, accommodation.
    The first is dead, the second is hopeless, but secure in a half-way house.  The third one is in trouble because I'm 78, will pass (as the hopeful say; end as the realists claim.), soon.  He can't work, has no friends.  What can I do to protect him?
    Only one solution.  I must immediately come up with a source of income for him.  I'm working on it.  The only certain way to protect him is to make so much money in the next one to five years I can leave him a trust fund from which he can survive on the earnings.
    Ideally, I will finish a project I've spent 800 hours on, learning how to be an agent to buy and sell personally-held deeds of trust.  When I finish my learning, hopefully I can teach it to my son.  He may be able to do it despite schizophrenia, because it is a home job, no boss, no certain hours.

    What, if anything, have I learned from living 45 years with schizophrenics?
    Like alcoholics -- which schizophrenics often also are -- they can be "normal" at times.  Even charming.
    Schizophrenics are chemically unbalanced.  Their brains work against them.
    Drugs can help them, but few will stay on them.  The drugs usually cause weight gain, loss of sexual desire, fatigue, tics, a mass of monstrous side-effects.
    The schizophrenia is awful.  The side effects of the "cure" are nearly as bad.
    Relatives and friends like to tell me "If only you would provide some boundaries for him (or her), and not allow them to not take their meds, if only you would be strict, force them to be decent, if only --"
    Erroneous brain chemicals are not amenable to normal techniques of life success.
    Again, hear me please, I'm not complaining.  Nor do I have hope.  I'm merely saying out loud the reality of the last 45 years.

Read more: http://grantflint.pnn.com/articles/show/10826-45-years-with-my-three-schizophrenics#ixzz1Z1P7ESqD